Anyone Can Get Into Yoga – Yoga is Lit

After discovering the rad benefits of meditation, our journey through to the gateway of good vibe living brings us to yoga. Yoga is “lit” and the only reason I say that is because that is the term the 7-year olds of this world appear to be using nowadays and I can dig it.

Can You Do Yoga?

That is an affirmative. Yoga is dialled in, and anyone can get into yoga. My 7 year old son practices yoga and my 83 year old mother-in-law does too. Yoga is not ageist and is for everyone who can dig it. If you have a functioning and ambulatory body, then you can benefit from yoga.

The funny thing about how we live in this world is that there is sometimes a collective consciousness that people buy into by making judgements about things based on a conditioned idea of it rather than actually having a firsthand experience with it. Stereotypes. Stereotypes can be very dis empowering. I always ensure that I do not engage in stereotyping and I try to call it out when I witness it happening. I do this, because I have experienced people stereotyping me and it is just a very limited way to experience someone or something.

Everyone is vastly beautiful, dynamic and individual and I think it does a disservice to our individuality by making blanket statements or judgements about a person by the recreational activities they engage in. Examples would include skateboarders are stoners, people who do yoga are vegetarian, lulu lemon wearing tree huggers, surfers are beach bums, chess players are nerds, and so on.

Every time I have indulged and engaged in any one of the activities aforementioned, these stereotypes arise. It is all kinds of curious to me but it is what it is and I just mind my own vibe and things seem to work out. When I suggested yoga to my son, he looked at me like I was trying to get him to join a cult. When I explained to him the physical benefits and the strength gained from working the interior muscles of your body and how much strength and personal physical endurance it takes to hold a side plank on one arm with ease takes a type of discipline that is unparalleled in most physical activities.

People who practice yoga regularly and with intended expansion, are some of the most freakishly strong people in this world. The power and strength that is developed by working much deeper than the superficial layers of your muscles enables you to develop an inner core strength that provides you with power,  physical flexibility and endurance. The only tool that you need is your body. I love that yoga is the implementation of using your body as its own exercise machine.

Yoga is a good thing and you can totally do yoga, no matter your age, your height, your weight or creed – if you have a working human body in full functionality, then yoga is dialled in and you can gain massive benefits from doing it.

The Physical Benefits of Yoga

Yoga is tremendous for the physicality of the human body and although I did a full day of research to suss out exactly the science behind that statement, I know it to be true because I have lived it. I healed two lower lumbar discs with the combo of meditation and a solid & committed yoga practice. Yoga connects you with you and it allows you to understand better your body and your mental relationship with its capabilities.

Yoga is an activity where you are mindfully positioning your body into different positions and lends itself to expanded flexibility in your muscles and joints. It be gentle and yoga can be intense, and whatever your level of capacity in terms of how connected you are to your body and its mobility, yoga improves your range of motion and will strengthen and enhance your musculature that supports your joints thus optimizing their conditioning.

As I mentioned above, back pain relief and as it turns out, complete rehabilitated slipped discs can be achieved through doing specific kinds of yoga. Yoga causes your body to relax and reduces stress in the body – the combination of these benefits yield an opportunity for your physical body to gain back its alignment. I was given specific restorative yoga poses to implement during my recovery and now I have no issues at all with my lower back and I achieved this surgery and narcotic free.

Preliminary research at Harvard also offers that yoga may be of assistance in healing misaligned health in the body such as fibromyalgia, ADHD, multiple scleroses, migraines, osteoporosis and mobility and balance issues. The only time I have ever experience yoga as a dis empowering endeavour was when I had vertigo. Otherwise, I feel like the Tin(wo)Man from the Wizard of Oz if I skip my yoga stretches for more than one day. It is a result of how accustomed and acclimated I am to yoga now and it indicates to me when I need attention and focus on my physical well-being when any part of my body does not feel relaxed and tension free.

Meditation and Yoga are a cocktail your body can naturally get high on and the only crash or come down you feel is if you do not maintain a consistent upkeep of the practice of them. Runner’s high is a thing too and there are so many beautiful and high vibrational feels your body can experience. The reason you can experience these feels is because of the chemicals our brains produce depending on the state of being we are in – regulated/coherent or unregulated/incoherent. Yoga keeps your system regulated which brings us to….

The Mental Health Benefits of Yoga

Yoga encourages using the breath as a method of connection with the self and as a tool to further enhance and engage in the poses of yoga to connect to the self in a more profound way.

The deep breathing that one implements during the activity of yoga provides you with a favourable relationship in regards to your autonomic nervous system. This system has the sympathetic and parasympathetic aspects which govern the regulation of our systems. Fight or flight is the work of the sympathetic system that prepares our body for survival to handle fighting, fleeing, fawning or freezing to any imminent threat.

The parasympathetic system does the work of “rest and digest” where your body is functioning in an optimally regulated state. Disease and declining health are a result of a system consistently maintaining a vibe in the direction of fight or flight whereas we are meant to really be jammin’ on the parasympathetic direction in a state of equilibrium and balance.

Yoga offers a calming of the mind, the body and yields a more peaceful and connected manner of going through your life experience as it connects you to your system in a more engaging way. It is a method to get comfortable in your own skin and the benefits to your mental health are beautifully empowering. The spiritual benefits of yoga that I have encountered along with the mental elevation and physical empowerment have made me grow exponentially in terms of my self perception and that of this world in which we live.

Our emotional and psychological energy gets stored in the body. When you work with mind body connectivity that the practice of yoga yields, you are able to release tension and become aware of where you hold bundled energy that may need resolving or releasing. Our mental and emotional states have a direct correlation on our physical health. They are intrinsically intertwined. Yoga develops your sense of self in these aspects of your being and provides the opportunity for you to be mindful and empowered in your own governance with a mindful mind and regulated system rather than being at the mercy of an unregulated system and ruminating and obsessive thought patterns. It is a gateway to a good vibe. The body is a powerful entity and yoga supports and expands this truth.

Yoga is a good vibe. So you tell me, do you like yoga?

Can you dig it?